


drown with me

by BerryliciousCheerio



Category: Power Rangers (2017)
Genre: F/F, content warning in the notes, it's uhhhhhh pretty angsty up in here, tbc trini's last name is not kwan but i wanted to tag just to make sure this showed up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-29
Updated: 2017-07-29
Packaged: 2018-12-08 11:19:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11645508
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BerryliciousCheerio/pseuds/BerryliciousCheerio
Summary: Frankly, Kim has no fucking clue as to why Trini’s here.or: trini's drunk.  kim's trying her best.  they figure it out.





	drown with me

**Author's Note:**

> 11\. things you said when you were drunk
> 
> content warnings: alcohol, self loathing, self hate, super vague allusion to suicidal ideation, internalized homophobia
> 
> disclaimed

 

 

 

 

Trini hasn’t said a word since she appeared on Kim’s doorstep, puffy eyed and clutching an already half empty bottle of whiskey.

That in itself was terrifying; it was the middle of the night and Kim’s parents were out of town, gone until next weekend at least, and Trini hadn’t texted, called—nothing.  All of a sudden there were just slow, heavy knocks on the front door, startling Kim from where she had fallen asleep on the couch.

And then there was Trini, looking a mess with her hair tied up and mussed, like she’d been running her fingers through it, the way she did when she was stressed.  She was barefoot too, but didn’t seem to notice it; her legs were bare, covered in mud, her sleep shorts wrinkled and rolling up her thighs.  Kim wasn’t sure she’d ever seen her so vulnerable, even at the bonfire, even after getting her ass kicked.

She looked so small.  Still looks small, curled up in the armchair in Kimberly’s living room.  It was usually Kim’s favorite spot, but she always ceded it to Trini when the rangers were over, always found more warmth in the image of the smaller girl looking so comfortable in Kim’s space.

That warmth is still there, but lessened now; less insistent, less likely to make Kim say something stupid.  Trini had offered her the bottle silently when she walked in, but Kim hadn’t accepted, made a snap decision that she’d need to be clear headed considering how these things usually went with them, since Trini obviously wasn’t.

She’s not sure how to ask what Trini needs.  Because if it was a pep talk she wanted, Jason was a better bet.  If her mom was ragging on her, she would have gone to Billy’s, where his mother would feed her and make up the guest bed with no questions.  If she just wanted to do stupid shit—Zack’s, probably, with his willingness to feed into whatever recklessness Trini’s drummed up.

Trini sometimes comes to her when she can’t sleep, when she needs a warm body in her bed, but usually she comes to Kim when she’s got too much energy and self-loathing and needs something to do with it—they tend to be the most in sync of all the rangers, at least for now.  But this wasn’t like those times when Trini hauled herself through Kim’s bedroom window, her eyes dark and wanting.  She came to the door, which she never does when it’s just her, not all of them.  

Frankly, Kim has no fucking clue as to why Trini’s here.

She’s just about to ask, just about to tiptoe her way around the way her heart dropped when she saw the bottle, saw that Trini had been crying.  Kim’s got the right question, she thinks, the safest one that will get her an answer without getting Trini to shut down, but then—

“Am I broken?” Trini asks abruptly, her eyes closed and head leaned back.  Kim almost thinks she’s asleep, that she just imagined her question, but then Trini adds in a quieter voice, “It feels like I am.”

“Trini—,” Kim starts, feeling like her chest is cracking open with love for this girl, feeling like the universe is so fucking cruel for making Trini feel like this, for not letting her see herself how Kim sees her, for not putting them in the right world where Kim can tell her how she sees her, where she’s not allowed to tell Trini how her entire world has kind of rearranged itself around Trini’s smile.

The other girl lifts her free hand to stop her.  “I think I am,” she says, and maybe this is what she came for.  She needed to say this, needed someone who would listen, who would let her get it all out.  Jason would keep trying to cheer Trini up, Zack wouldn’t let her speak so poorly of herself, Billy would give her explanations; Kim’s the only one that really understands this, at least, the all-consuming need to just have some fucking space to hate yourself.  Even if it hurts.  Even if it can’t be true.

“I think that—I think they’re right.”  She doesn’t elaborate who she thinks is right, just keeps going, gaining speed, traction.  “I think maybe I was just?  Born bad?  Like maybe my mom gave birth to her perfect daughter, but the hospital fucked up and switched her with me and now there’s this girl running around out in the world that could make my family so happy, but they’re stuck with me.”  

She pauses, takes another long drink; misses her mouth just a little, wipes the spilled liquor off her chin with her arm.

Trini’s eyes are open now, staring up at the ceiling.  Kim thinks that maybe she just wanted a witness for this.  Someone to hear it, so that she wasn’t the only one with these words rattling around in her head.  

Kim’s known for a long time that she’ll be whatever Trini needs her to be.  Even if that’s just someone in her bed.  Even if that’s just a confessional.

“Like,” Trini picks back up, seeming to jump to a new subject, unaware.  “Like who fucks up a friendship just—just because—,” she breaks off, clenching her jaw and turning to look at Kim helplessly, like she can’t find the right words, like maybe Kim will know.  And—god, Kim would do anything to help her, to find her the right words.  Anything to help her look a little less scared, a little less helpless.

Trini starts to cry, her face screwing up and Kim’s—she’s never—

She doesn’t know what to do.  Doesn’t know if Trini wants to be touched, held; doesn’t know if she’s like Kim, where she just wants everyone to pretend like she’s not even crying.  They’ve never really done this with each other outside of bonfire nights, but then there’s the boys as buffers, there’s the quarry and the woods and all the places they’ve found to hide away from one another.  They’ve never had to traverse the minefield that is emotional intimacy.

But it hurts too much to do ignore, to pretend like Trini pulling her knees up to her chest and sobbing into them isn’t one of the most painful things that Kim’s ever experienced—dying in a fiery pit included.

“I just—I keep  _ruining_  things,” Trini sobs as Kim stands, moving towards her slowly.  “Rita—she was right.”  Kim bristles at the name, at the thought of the woman that killed Billy, that nearly killed them all.  That left those scars on Trini’s neck.

“C’mere,” Kim murmurs, leaning down and slipping one arm around Trini’s shoulders, one under her knees.  She lifts her easily and Trini doesn’t seem to mind or, well, even notice.  Kim rearranges them in the armchair, holds Trini to her chest and manages to slip the bottle out of her hand, manages to set it on the side table, just out of Trini’s reach.  

When her arms go back around Trini, the other girl tenses and for a minute Kim thinks that this was the wrong move, that she’s fucked up, freaked her out.  But then she relaxes, turns into Kim.  She’s got to be drunk, has to be completely blitzed because there’s no way she’d be out and out cuddling into Kim otherwise, not when awake at least.

"Rita was right—I’m the fuck up on this team.  You—you all  _fit_  together, but I—I’m going to get you all killed one day, I’m—I’m fucking  _awful_ , I can’t—I can’t—,” she breaks off into another body wracking sob and everything hurts, everything in Kim wants to make this pain disappear, wants to convince Trini that she’s not all these things, that she’s just as important to the team as any of them.

She doesn’t have the words for that, struggles to find them for herself too.  There’s nothing she can do for Trini, nothing to fix this hurt.  This is years of her family, her shitty schools—god, if Kim could go back in time and fight everyone that had a hand in breaking Trini down this much, she would.  In an instant.  In a heartbeat.

“And I—,” Trini finally manages, her voice cracking.  “I keep—I keep thinking a-about—.”  She stops again, lets out this high, keening noise that feels like a shot, straight through Kim.  She starts running through possible ends for that sentence, each one scaring her more than the last.   _I keep thinking about leaving.  I keep thinking about dying._  “I keep thinking about you,” Trini spits.

And— _shit_.  She wasn’t expecting that.

“I keep thinking about you, and I—I’m disgusting, I’m awful, you’re my—my best friend,” she says like it pains her, like she has to force the words out.  “You deserve so much better.  You deserve more than whatever I can give you.”

“Trini,” Kim tries, feeling like she’s invading the other girl’s privacy somehow, as if she hadn’t shown up on Kim’s doorstep.  “Trini, you’re drunk.”

“No shit,” Trini huffs.

“I don’t—you’ll regret this in the morning, if you remember it at all.”

“I won’t.”   _Won’t what?_  Kim wants to ask, wants to clarify.  “You deserve more and you deserve to know that—that I  _know_  you deserve more.”

“Trin,” she tries again, feeling like they’re hurtling towards something inevitable, something that’s going to change them forever.  Something she thought she’d have more time to prepare for.

“You shouldn’t—,” Trini whispers thickly.  “You shouldn’t have to be okay with just  _me_.  You shouldn’t have to hide because of  _me_.”

It won’t do any good to try and argue with her now, to try and assure her that any time she can get with Trini is worth it.  That she’s willing to take anything Trini is willing to give her.  That she made this decision because she wanted to.  Trini’s too drunk and too deep into this spiral to really hear it—maybe later, maybe when she’s sober, maybe if she holds her hand in the light of day—maybe then she’ll understand how deep Kim is in this.

“You need to sleep this off,” Kim says instead of all of that.  “You’re staying over tonight.”

“I should go home,” Trini slurs.

Kim brushes back some of Trini’s hair, tucks it back out of her eyes.  “You can have my bed,” she offers.  “But I’ll drive you, if you really need to get back.”

She knows she’s won their nonexistent argument by the way Trini’s eyes have started to droop, by the way the smaller girl’s started to sag against Kim.

Kim stands, brings Trini with her.  She’ll come through and clean up later, once Trini’s in bed; she’ll pour out the rest of the whiskey and hide the evidence, put everything back the way it was, just in case Trini doesn’t want to acknowledge it all.  Trini’s head drops onto her shoulder as she walks up the stairs, her nose cold as she presses her face into the juncture of Kim’s neck.

“Stay,” she mumbles once Kim’s laid her down, pulled the blankets over her.

“You’re drunk,” Kim says again, trying to pull her hand out of Trini’s grasp and failing (though, if she’s honest, she’s not trying that hard).

Trini blinks up at her.  “I am,” she nods sleepily.  “But I always sleep better with you.”  She manages to pull Kim into the bed, onto her; unfazed, Trini rolls her off to one side before settling back in.  “I feel safer,” she admits, her eyes closing.  

“Yeah,” Kim hums in agreement, finding her way under the covers as well.  Trini reaches out, links their hands.  “Me too.”

 

**...**

 

(In the morning, in the unflinching light of day, Kim does the same.  Trini startles, stares at her, but she doesn’t pull away.  It’s not everything, not even close to all the things they need to talk about.  But it’s a start.  And it’s enough)

 

 

 


End file.
